Latino youth experience factors unique to their own ethnicity, and it is partly these factors which play a significant role in their decision to engage in delinquent activity. Perpetual bias, criminalization, and punitive punishment at the hands of those with authoritative power also contribute to Latino youth’s decisions to engage in delinquent activity as a coping mechanism. Although trends in Latino youth crime have been decreasing and are presently at historic lows, an analysis of the factors that drive the respective trends will allow insight into creating policy suggestions to benefit the growing Latino community as a whole. Motivation to reduce trends in Latino youth crime primarily through a deep understanding of the culture include utilized its strengths to successfully rehabilitate and nurture at-risk youth. Implementation of community-based groups in at-risk neighborhoods should be the first step to laying the groundwork of reducing Latino youth crime.

La misurazione del crimine in Europa è difficile a causa delle diverse definizioni giuridiche dei reati e dalle differenti metodologie utilizzate per la raccolta di dati nei paesi Europei. L’Unione Europea produce indicatori strutturali in grado di misurare e confrontare le caratteristiche dei paesi: gli indicatori sociali possono aiutare a monitorare e analizzare le condizioni di vita e la qualità della vita e a contestualizzare il crimine descrivendo l’Europa d oggi. Sulla base di tre macro teorie criminologiche (modernizzazione, civilizzazione e opportunità) alcuni indicatori sociali sono selezionati e incrociati con i livelli di crimine così da poter identificare dei fattori di rischio per le diverse tipologie di reati e per valutare la validità di queste teorie in Europa. Infine l’uso di tecniche statistiche avanzate (cluster analysis) permetterà di identificare degli insiemi omogenei di paesi, per poter analizzare e confrontare l’andamento temporale tra i fattori di rischio identificati e il crimine in Europa. / Measuring crime in Europe is problematic because many different legal concept definitions and statistic collecting practices have been embraced in each country. In recent years, numerous efforts have been made to further this overarching goal and today, there are sources that present more comparable information on crime in Europe. At the same time, the European Union has produced broadly agreed upon structural indicators, called ‘social indicators’, to systematically report, monitor, and analyze living conditions and quality of life. These indicators help to contextualize crime by describing and relating to today’s European realities. On the basis of three macro theoretical paradigm indicators (the civilization theory, modernization theory, and opportunity theory), a set of social indicators will be selected and cross-examined with crime rates recorded in Europe. This endeavour will first test the relationship between the social indicators and different types of crimes in order to assess the validity of the theoretical frameworks across Europe as a whole. Second, it will identify a set of risk factors for the selected types of crimes. After that, using advanced statistical techniques (cluster analyses) to identify homogeneous sets of countries across Europe, the comparison will take into account the evolution of crime levels in two selected, averaged periods between 1990 and 2007. Crime trends will be compared and cross-checked with social indicator tendencies to explain crime variations over time.

Qu’ils en soient les auteurs ou les victimes, les Afro-Américains ont toujours affiché un taux d’homicide largement supérieur à celui des Blancs aux États-Unis. La criminologie a toutefois bien documenté la convergence du taux d’homicide noir vers le taux d’homicide blanc au cours des dernières décennies. À cet effet, il est attesté que le taux d’homicide noir diminue de façon continuelle et de façon plus importante que le taux d’homicide blanc depuis les années 1990. Toutefois, peu de recherches ont examiné la situation depuis 2000. Cette recherche doctorale propose d’analyser la façon dont a évolué l'écart entre le taux d’homicide noir et blanc entre 2000 et 2018 en prenant pour comparaison les deux décennies précédentes. Les résultats permettent de conclure à la fin de la convergence entre taux d’homicide noir et blanc depuis 2000. L’écart entre ces deux taux recommence en effet à se creuser à partir de cette date et se révèle, de surcroît, en moyenne plus élevé que l’écart qui existait entre 1980 et 2000. Ici, une analyse de l'évolution de la part moyenne de foyers noirs et blancs appartenant aux catégories sociales les plus pauvres n’a pas permis d’expliquer de façon certaine cette évolution. Toutefois, l’analyse des écarts de revenus a permis de révéler que les États ayant vu leur ratio d’homicide s’accroître sont souvent les États où les écarts entre la part de foyers pauvres noirs et blancs sont les plus élevés. De fait, l’analyse montre que la situation économique des Noirs s’est dégradée depuis 2000 en comparaison des Blancs, attestant ainsi d’un retour général des inégalités, qu’elles soient criminelles ou économiques, entre Afro-Américains et Blancs depuis 2000. / Whether perpetrators or victims, African Americans have historically had a much higher homicide rate than Whites in the United States. Criminology, however, has well documented the convergence of the black homicide rate to the white homicide rate over the past several decades. To that end, there is evidence that the black homicide rate has been steadily declining by a greater amount than the white homicide rate since the 1990s. However, little research has examined the situation since 2000. This doctoral research proposes to analyze how the gap between the black and white homicide rate has changed between 2000 and 2018 using the previous two decades as a comparison. The results allow us to conclude that the convergence between black and white homicide rates has ended since 2000. The gap between these two rates starts to widen again from this date and is, moreover, on average higher than the gap that existed between 1980 and 2000. Here, an analysis of the evolution of the average share of black and white households belonging to the poorest social categories did not provide a definite explanation for this evolution. However, analysis of income differentials revealed that states with increasing homicide ratios are often the states with the highest differentials in the share of poor black and white households. Indeed, the analysis shows that the economic situation of blacks has worsened since 2000 compared to whites, attesting to a general return of inequality, whether criminal or economic, between African Americans and whites since 2000.

This study examines changes over time in 40 different Sherlock Holmes films and 39 television series and movies spanning from 1900 to 2017. Quantitative observations were mixed with a qualitative examination. Perceptions of law enforcement became more positive over time, the types of crime did not vary, and representation of race and gender improved over time with incrementally positive changes in the representation of queer, mentally ill, and physically handicapped individuals. The exact nature of these trends is discussed. Additionally, the trends of different decades are explored and compared. Sherlock Holmes is mostly used as a vehicle for storytelling rather than for the salacious crimes that he solves, making the identification of perceptions of crime in different decades difficult. The reasons for why different Sherlock Holmes projects were created in different eras and for different purposes are discussed.